Newbie chained Options - local page state not updated

I try to make a location filter with three options/select fields e.g when I select a state it should populate the options for the country select with the countries of the selected state. The debug screen really shows me that the response from the api is correct. I have two action chains one is triggered by page load (GetStates) and one by onSelected (GetCountries) of the Staes select widget

Here we can see the local page state variable is not updated but I can't figure out why I work all day on this but I have no idea 😞

Here this is the Action for the working GetStates Action chain

and here for GetCountries like I said triggered by the onSelect event fom the state option widget

Why is the first updating the page state but the second not? I've done exactly the same.

Thanks in advance for your advice
mike